Featured Photographer: Julia Beyer – Our World In Flames

Julia Beyer’s world is on fire. She lately lower back from a experience to Iceland where she used Expired Polaroid Time- Zero movie to create scenes that converted the wasteland round her into psychedelic fantasies. Beyer has managed to capture one of the maximum stunning locations in the world and flip it right into a flaming dreamscape suitable most effective for an adventure from fact.

The landscapes she captures are exquisitely incorrect from the expired chemistry in the expired film she uses that echo the growing fact of our international heating up. You can without problems mission that the surreal views she offers constitute now not handiest our loss of life world, but the need to escape the harsh truths of humanities’ grim future. The blue colours and golden flames that engulf the herbal wonders she travels to exemplify the more and more sparse proper wasteland areas of our global which can be slowly growing up in flames.

When asked approximately her reports travelling Iceland this yr in July 2018 she defined u. S. A. As an area of natural beauty that is one of the closing locations on the earth – raw and majestic, yet nevertheless big and intimidating. She noted that because some of the areas of Iceland are not inhabited it is straightforward to experience like you’re by myself on the planet, however, this sense fades while you start to observe how people have completely changed this land for the worse. After the initial surprise of beauty, Beyer became left with emotions of disappointment at the same time as observing the rapidly receding glaciers, mindless vacationers littering everywhere and treading on sensitive moss a good way to take years to evidently regrow.

Though Beyer’s images shipping us to these dark and mysterious places, she has no goal people staying there. Beyer’s other creative skills expand to track in which she plays vocals within Germany based totally dream pop band, Chandeen. Here, her melancholy voice is placed on the pinnacle of dreamy journey hop synth backings that discover the unhappiness this is present even when the beats tell us otherwise. Beyer’s has been generating records with Chandeen on the grounds that 2007, that is wherein she first encountered the world of expired Polaroid film. In 2008, French Polaroid photographer Emilie Lefellic filmed and produced the song video for “Welcome the Still” using diverse mediums together with expired Polaroid film which upon its viewing, mesmerized Beyer with its unique and gratifying beauty.

In 2012, though she turned into preoccupied together with her musical endeavours, Beyer commenced having an artistic passion growing inside her to work with the medium of an instantaneous movie. It became presently that she recalled her publicity to the sensual and delicate portions created by way of Emilie Lefellic and took the plunge into the instant film world. Though she might have appreciated this first try to be successful, she changed into met with the disappointment of mediocre consequences from some of the first batches of the Impossible Project’s (now Polaroid Originals) Push! Movie. Not being one to surrender, she continued via the steep learning curve of the usage of the Impossible Project film and subsequently started to shoot on a normal basis in the spring of 2014. Through this transition she found out that she started out to observe matters otherwise than earlier than, the use of images as a manner to exchange her notion of the sector around her. She advised us that “Where I saw unpleasant skyscrapers earlier than, I now see interesting geometric shapes. Where I saw a gas station within the night time, I now see countless combos of colours”.

“I don’t have any interest to capture the scene as I see it right earlier than my eyes – then I could as properly shoot digital – but I love to feature another, dreamlike measurement to it thru the (in most cases) expired chemistry with fantastically incorrect effects.”
“Sólfar” – Expired Polaroid Time Zero Film – 2018
“Sólfar” – Expired Polaroid Time Zero Film – 2018

It wasn’t till 2016 that Beyer finally had the possibility to acquire packs of expired Time Zero, the movie that sparked her love for instant film. During a tour of the Polaroid production plant in Enschede inside the Netherlands, now owned and run by way of Polaroid Originals, she made the acquaintance of a pleasant aged couple who got here to recognize Beyer’s love for the medium thru her apparent enthusiasm. Though she obtained a curious frown from the husband, possibly in confusion on why she would need such an antique movie, she soon had containers of Polaroid Time Zero film on the doorstep. Beyer actually recollects the day the package arrived as a huge occasion in her photographic existence. She promised to herself the moment she opened the bundle that she would most effective use the movie for something absolutely special. Beyer soon realized this % with herself and took an avenue experience through the Southwestern United States. This was her first journey of turning monumental and widely known scenes into surreal dream-like landscapes the use of expired immediate film, and the photos she captured the ones weeks have proved to her a meaningful reminder of her adventure up until this factor.

In the four years that have passed given that Beyer began her instantaneous movie adventure, she has emerged as known for her unique photographic style utilizing expired Polaroid movie stock. She has done feats starting from being published in Blur Magazine, interviewed on Analog Magazine to being featured on Polaroid’s Blog. In addition to her photographic accomplishments, she has these days been able to integrate her love for music and images into a couple of initiatives. Her involvement inside the tuning industry has enabled her to use her Polaroid creations as the quilt photographs for the July 2018 Chandeen EP, Rouge, the May 2018 Phosphenes’ album, Find Us Where We’re Hiding, as well as shoot promoting fabric for Laura Carbone’s 2018 album, Empty Sea.

Though Beyer has had lots of fulfilment, her inventory of expired Polaroid Time Zero film is dwindling. As of today, she has simply packs left. The ironic part of her demise movie stock is that though Polaroid Originals may also have the studies and improvement to recreate this iconic movie, it is able to to be produced anymore because of the poisonous chemical compounds that were used while it became firstly produced. It seems fitting that the medium she captured the disappearing Icelandic surroundings on, will soon be no greater as well. When requested about her movie quandary she shared with us: “My limited and dwindling stock of Time Zero film is rather giving me a feeling of great nostalgia. Things you already know from your early life or formative years which might be slowly disappearing, breaking, discontinued or misplaced. It’s a sense of inevitable drawing close loss and mourning. Time Zero film regularly makes me want if you want to time journey. I wish I had found instantaneous images quicker, in order that I may want to have had more time to shoot this movie and witness the transformation into The Impossible Project”.